The text this morning is from the Gospel according to Luke, the third chapter:
As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” So with many other exhortations he preached good news to the people. But Herod the tetrarch, who had been reproved by him for Herodias, his brother’s wife, and for all the evil things that Herod had done, added this to them all, that he locked up John in prison. Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”Thus far the text.
My dear friends in Christ,
Last week, we celebrated the Epiphany of our Lord. There we are reminded that the Christ Child has been revealed to the nations by the example of the Wise Men. As we move ahead many years in our Lord’s life in just a week’s time, we’re reminded that there is another revelation of the Lord in today’s text. That’s what the word Epiphany means, revelation. Our Lord was revealed as King to the nations with the Magi. Today, He is revealed as the very Son of God in His Baptism. In fact, today, we have for us revealed the entire Trinity, one of a very few rare instances in which this happens.
But that’s the climax of the story; that’s the reward at the end of the journey. First, we see the Lord coming to the Jordan River to be baptized by John. It’s not because our Lord needed to be baptized, and thank God for that, actually. The sinless Lamb of God needs no Baptism for His own sins, but that He needs Baptism for our sins. And we should give thanks this day that we see the Lord coming to John that they may fulfill all righteousness, do the righteous thing, by having Jesus, the sinless Jesus, baptized in the water, not repenting of His sin, but taking to Himself the sins of the entire world.
Here, then, we find the start of our Baptism, for our sins, like water tornadoing down the bathtub drain, flow from us to Jesus. We thank God for this, we sing His praise, we tell everyone what He has done: that He has taken away our sins, and given us His righteous name–the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. This is the point of this day: that our Lord was baptized in the Jordan for our sins, He was baptized for us. He needed no repentance as we do. He needed no forgiveness as we do. Yet, He went to the water for us, because we need these things.
And there, in the water, we find the call of the Father on us, because we have the Lord’s righteousness in our Baptism, “This is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased.” This happens to us by the gift of God. This happens because the Holy Spirit has come to us in our Baptism and granted us the gift of faith. This happens to us because our Lord has judged us in the water and found us to be His own.
Water is dangerous. Water is the most destructive force on the planet, though we don’t often perceive it as such. Water literally carved out the Grand Canyon. Water can destroy a community in minutes. Water can bury mountains. Water can crush a body. Water can make a submarine implode. There’s nothing safe about water. Water has drowned us, killed us in its flow over us, and we are dead. God has made His water flow over and has killed the Old Adam in us. Every day he dies.
But water is also life-giving. Water brings us to life. The Old Man dies under the surface, but the new Adam, Jesus the Christ rises to new life, promising us the very resurrection of the Son of God. The Holy Sacrament of Baptism is life itself, and in it we find what God promises to us: life, salvation, and the forgiveness of sins. It is the deliverance of a good conscience toward God to us. It is the giving of faith. It saves us. Baptism is everything. It’s wonderful, literally wonder-full. The public pronouncement of Jesus as the Son of God is also your pronouncement, the pronouncement that God puts over you, that you carry His name, that you are His own.
Yet, this is not the end. For the day is coming when Baptisms with water will cease and our Lord will baptize with fire. In Greek, to baptize means to wash. You baptize pots, vessels, feet, even whole bodies, even couches to clean them. That’s why we Baptize with water and not Coca Cola. But, in the end, water washes us no more and now fire will flow over us, cleansing us, which sounds kinda ouchy. Yet fire purifies. It cleanses disease that water cannot take away. It purifies the body and the soul in a way that your shower never could.
But fire isn’t just a good thing, it’s a scary thing, too. It reduces stuff to ash. It burns skin off bodies. And John tells us that Jesus will baptize with this fire. Now, this doesn’t mean that the Sacrament of Holy Baptism is going to change. It means that Jesus is going to burn this world to the ground. He’s going to light everything on fire and take it out. It’s corrupted. It’s destroyed. And He’s going to make it new. He’s going to remake it the way it should be. He’s going to take all that He has created, bundle it together, and light it up to burn it down. Whatever stands at the end, stays.
And what is it that is able to endure? Only you, my friends. Doused in the waters of Baptism, you are safe from the purifying fire that will remake the heavens and the earth. The sinless Christ gives to you His perfection, that you might endure through the judgment of God. Our sins have stained us, made us unclean. Sin is the disease that infects us and there is no cure. The only way to get rid of sin is death. You can either die in your sin or you can die in your Baptism. The first way doesn’t really stop sin for long, for then you are tested in the fires of judgment and found wanting. But to die in Baptism stops sin forever.
When I was 20, I spent a few months in Russia. Now, we were in Siberia, not some tropical paradise. Still, a couple months after I got back, I was diagnosed with something like malaria, something that had laid dormant for a while until I got too stressed out and it kicked in. High fevers and night sweats plagued me for weeks, until finally my body burned the virus out. They really couldn’t ever diagnose exactly what it was because my fevers had killed it off. But, while I started to get better, it would be, well, almost two decades now where I still suffer through the symptoms coming back. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and the bed will be soaked with my sweat. I don’t know why, it just happens. I’ll change the sheets, drink some water, and go back to sleep.
Sin is like this, though, of course, much more serious than malaria. The Sacrament of Baptism cleanses us from our sins, makes us die to the Old Adam, and it raises Christ in us. But the Old Adam somehow comes back, and so we must kill him every day. We still suffer the symptoms of sin. We break the Law of God. We suffer. We grieve. We mourn. We die. But, as we sin, we repent, we’re forgiven, we change the sheets, we drink some water, we go back to life in Christ. This what we do when say we die daily to sin. We try to put it to death in us, even knowing the impossibility of the task. We do this with the help of the Holy Spirit. And when we do sin, we ask forgiveness and receive it.
This isn’t trying to make light of sin. Sin is literally life-taking. But, as forgiven children of God in the Baptism of Christ, sin is nothing to us anymore but a nuisance. Sin has been revealed as a horrible neighbor, but there is a remedy for it: we call the cops, we call Christ. We call out to Him in repentance, and He races to us with forgiveness. We call out to Him for strength to resist it, and He races to deliver. We don’t make light of sin, we want to kill it. Yet, we cannot. We must wait for our Jesus to do so, and so He has.
He took your sin from you in His Baptism and He crucified it on His cross. The baptism of John was finished in that crucifixion. As we are baptized into the death of Christ, Jesus was baptized into His own death. As He was raised from the dead, we are brought out of the water and into the newness of life, eternal life. For there, at that font, every time it is used, the heavens open and the voice of God declares, “You are my beloved child, with whom I am well pleased.” This is why we seek the new life of leaving sin behind. Yet, even when we cannot, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus, the very revealed Son of God, on whose account God is pleased with us. He fights for you, and He forgives all your sins, for He has already taken them all and the punishment you deserve.
In Baptism, you have been made a child of God. The Trinitarian revelation at Jesus’ baptism is the climax of the story, because that is the very name that is put on you. You now have the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, on you forever, for you are Baptized into His name. And because of that, you may stand confident that our Lord’s promises of forgiveness, life, and salvation are indeed yours for He has taken to Himself all that used to belong to you and has given you every good thing in its place. You are the Father’s, and the Son’s, and the Holy Spirit’s, now and forever. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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